Halfway through a phone conversation with White Lung frontwoman Mish Barber-Way, the vocalist’s train of thought is interrupted by a shrieking bird.
“Can you hear that squawking in the background?” she asks. “I live in this neighbourhood where there’s peacocks everywhere. They’re like the squirrels of the neighbourhood. There’s one that sits on my roof and squawks all day. It’s insane.”
This glamorous bird infestation is part of the singer’s life in Los Angeles, where the former Vancouverite relocated three years ago. She and her husband recently moved into a new home — with “a giant swimming pool,” she exclaims excitedly — and she has been immersed in household pursuits.
“It’s way bigger than our last place, so I’m getting all this new stuff,” she says. “I’m doing a lot of domestic hunting, which is rad.”
Aside from the squawking peacocks, it’s a seemingly peaceful existence — something that’s surprising when you consider Barber-Way’s roots as a punk rock hell-raiser. Over the past decade, she and her White Lung bandmates have carved out a reputation for violently loud, viciously angry noisemaking. Their fiery energy has earned them rave reviews, major festival bookings and a record deal with the prestigious UK label Domino Recording Company (also home to Arctic Monkeys, Animal Collective and Real Estate).
These days, White Lung is an international operation; while Barber-Way acclimatizes to life in the City of Angels, guitarist Kenneth Williams and drummer Anne-Marie Vassiliou have remained home in Vancouver.
The geographical divide meant that the friends had to adopt a new approach when writing their fourth full-length, the freshly released Paradise. Rather than jamming together in a room, as had been their previous method, the bandmates entered the studio with a collection of song fragments but almost no completed material.
“It was like a collage that hadn’t been glued together,” Barber-Way remembers of the sessions. “They [Williams and Vassiliou] came down to LA and we worked for a month straight, gluing all of the pieces together and turning it into an album. I didn’t finalize a single melody or lyric until we were in the studio. I worked non-stop for two weeks to do that.”
This overhauled creative process resulted in a textured sound that departs from White Lung’s usual pedal-to-the-metal punk. Williams’ guitar parts are atmospherically layered, with ferociously distorted riffs contrasted by effects-doused ambience, and Vassiliou’s tempos are more varied than in the past. The new direction is particularly apparent on “Below,” a restrained ballad that’s filled with sweetly echoing licks and uncharacteristically honeyed melodies. Elsewhere, producer Lars Stalfors’ crystalline touch shines on “Hungry,” a tuneful rocker that’s flecked with spacious reverb and moody harmonies.
“When you slow down, it gives people a chance to really hear what you’re doing,” the vocalist points out. “It’s scary, because people can hear what you’re actually saying and what you’re actually doing. So I wanted to push that and make myself get over that fear. Speed and fuzz and distortion are all just easy ways of masking the songs. It’s produced very clearly. It’s crystal clear.”
Rather than rely on a shock-and-awe approach of snarls and shouts, Barber-Way’s melodies on Paradise are her catchiest and most melodic to date. “I wanted to prove that I could sing,” she explains. “And to make anthemic choruses. To really embrace a chorus. Not be afraid to make a real chorus. One that was challenging and was sung and had a bit more of a pop edge to it.”
Despite this outlook, there are still moments of blistering punk aggression. “Vegas” is a blitz of jagged guitars and full-throttle rhythms, while the explosive “Kiss Me When I Bleed” features an alarming refrain of “I will give birth in a trailer / Huffing the gas in the air.”
This tale of trailer park childbirth was one of several songs that Barber-Way penned from the perspective of fictitious characters. This writing style was necessary, she reveals, given the happiness of her personal life.
“It’s not a great place to be in — when you’re super content and full of complacency — when you’re writing lyrics,” she admits. “The best lyrics come from animosity and feeling down and feeling confused or feeling upset. The freedom of fiction allowed me to create really strong images because I could say things that I wasn’t allowed to say as myself.”
It’s a natural fit for the singer to explore different writing methods, given her skyrocketing side-career as a journalist. She’s a successful freelancer who writes for numerous publications (full disclosure: she writes the Westender column Sex with Mish Way) and does on-screen reporting for Vice Media’s digital channel Broadly. Adding to her ever-expanding resume, she also acted in the Amber Tamblyn film Paint It Black, which will arrive in cinemas next year.
Clearly, she’s not the type to stagnate. Some of White Lung’s fans, however, have been resistant to the group’s sonic evolution. To these punk purists, the frontwoman offers no apologies.
“That’s what the old albums exist for, okay?” she says, a hint of frustration in her voice. “If you don’t like the new, listen to the old ones. I have to move on now. I’m not going to keep writing the same thing. It’s boring. Imagine you had to write the same essay over and over and over and over — you’d shoot yourself in the head.”
• White Lung’s album Paradise is out now on Domino Records. Catch White Lung as part of Levitation Vancouver, June 17 at Malkin Bowl.
